


Over the Fence

by LyrebirdArvo, WhiskeyTick



Series: Pisica Vagaboanda: Davokar AU [2]
Category: Symbaroum (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Alcohol, Body Horror, Dissociation, Gen, Hallucinations, May Trigger Cotard's Syndrome, Out of Body Experiences, Sanism, Schizophrenia Written By Schizophrenic, Sliske's Appearance is Minor, Smoking, Swearing, Usual Pict Things, Wightification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:20:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23315284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyrebirdArvo/pseuds/LyrebirdArvo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiskeyTick/pseuds/WhiskeyTick
Summary: YEAR 21Pict encounters chartered hunters in the Davokar. They're in need of a guide.
Series: Pisica Vagaboanda: Davokar AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1420747
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5





	Over the Fence

**Author's Note:**

> AKA leaning more into weird/unsettling forest bastard Pict like I've wanted to since RS but never got around to because I wanted to be all presentable and formal with setting up the situation chronologically.
> 
> Also pretty sure this is at least some kinda coming-out for my neuroshit here but yknow I'm tired and want to go off on indulgence.

## Pict

Cold fog hung between the trees, blurring the sunlight that managed to filter through the heavy leaf canopy above. It was quiet, but in the way woods were quiet - if you actually listened, it was full of rodents, and birds, and spiders, and far larger things that could be mistaken for trees themselves when the visibility was as low as it was.

The air hit my throat differently as I came to. I hadn’t been unconscious, but I couldn’t remember making the decision to walk here. I fumbled for my keys, mashed the ‘lock’ symbol with my thumb, and grumbled to no-one when I couldn’t hear the horn chirp back.

I’d have to wander until I found it again. 

I pulled the carton from my coat pocket, lipped a cigarette out, and flicked a cantrip along my finger to light the end. Acrid smoke curled in my lungs, crept back through my throat, then trickled out to mingle with the fog.

_“Journey into Davokar is hazardous. Those who are not sufficiently prepared may very well find their first excursion to be their last.”_

_Fearmongering shit._

I took another drag as I watched a beetle dart through the grass, hellward bound to the sliver of carcass barely visible to me through the bushes.

_Just don’t be an ass to it, and it won’t be an ass back._

“You there!”

I winced at the voice, left with a tinny reverb by my fading hangover, and took an especially hard inhale off the tobacco.

A handful of people - charters, no doubt - came marching through the undergrowth to my right. A broad figure in refurbished soldier’s armor owned the voice, by the looks of things. “Are you lost, too?”

“Probably.”

“Hah! But you look at ease. I’d guess you know the area some?”

“Some.” _Don’t you-_

“Good! I don’t mean to intrude on whatever it is you’re doing out here, but our guide unfortunately ran into a large spider, and. Well. You know how that goes.”

_Motherfucker._

“Would you be interested? There is strength in numbers out here, one human to another. And we’ll see you recieve the guide’s share of the cut, Prios rest them.”

 _Sure you will._

“Don’t want the money,” I muttered, giving them, then their companions, a once-over. “Got a bottle between you?”

Two of them glanced between each other, then one reluctantly drew up a bottle from his bag. “It’s for being used as an antiseptic-”

I took a step closer and snatched it up. “It’ll do. Fuck you looking for in here, then.”

“Boss-”

“Good to have you on board,” said ‘Boss’ with a curt edge. They were hard-devoted to the transaction. Probably more distressed at being lost than they were prepared to admit. “We’re here to forage for alchemical ingredients. The kind that are hard to get, if you catch my drift. They fetch a high price back in Thistle Hold.”

“So you just need to go deeper in.”

“Ideally.”

“Fine.”

* * *

I choked down the nasty liquid - too bitter, definitely doing unpleasant shit to my insides - as I lead the four of them through the labyrinth. They were whispering to each other. Coordinating something. I probably would’ve been suspicious under other circumstances, but none of them looked like the kind that could find a path here. Had to do with whatever they were looking for, then.

The sensation of unseen eyes prickling on my neck felt different than usual.

“Is this a plant or some shit?”

The conversation went silent, and the person titled Boss jogged forward a few paces. “Nothing like that, I’m afraid. The ingredients are from live prey.”

“Sketchy fucking way to say that.”

“How so?”

“People just say animals if they’re hunting animals.”

 _“Ah._ That they do, that they do. Which is why -” They pressed a slip of paper, too well prepared, against my hand. “- I didn’t say that.”

I flipped the fold open and scanned the apothecary’s handwriting.

_‘Hair, ears, nails, tongues, of the creature ‘elf’ in their first season life stage. Rewarded handsomely by the ounce.’_

_‘Course you are._

We were being watched, then. Insects squirmed at the corners of my eyes, forming the shapes of trees that overlaid and writhed across those physically around us. I glanced over to make sure ‘Boss’ wasn’t really looking before sucking down the receipt.

“It pays more reliably than the treasure hunting ever did,” they were saying. “There’s secrets in here, sure, but the safety of a good check can’t be beat. I mean, look at this place! The people who live here are madfolk.”

_Hm._

“If you’ve done jobs in Davokar before, why’s your ass need a guide?”

“Different business, that!” They laughed, the sound reverberating beneath their helmet. “You just keep your eyes on the forest, while we watch for what’s _in_ it. Divide and conquer, as they say! We’ve had two successful hunts before, just like that. Keep leading us deeper, sir.”

_‘Sir.’_

I made a vague gesture that could probably be mistaken for something committal, and took another long draught of the antiseptic. 

* * *

Half an hour later, I’d actually gotten my bearings on where we were. I used them to head north, until the ground started to go soft and pools of oversaturated water drowned the clearing’s grass in mud.

One of the party broke away from their cluster, like ‘Boss’ had before, to pester me.

“So!”

“Mmph.”

“You’re drinking distilled ethanol.”

“I can feel it eroding my stomach lining, yeah. Mind your own damn business.”

She blinked, a forcibly polite expression plastered on her face. I felt like she was probably the one I’d snatched the bottle from in the first place, but couldn’t really remember.

“Right. I also couldn’t help but notice, ah, your fingers?”

“Bet you could’ve.”

“Most learn not to come into the woods without a license after the first finger. You’ve done it twice, by the looks of it.”

“Three,” I corrected, holding up the other hand. “Got caught more when I was younger.”

“And the eye?”

 _The missing one, or the bitch that’s still in the socket?_ “Lost it in here somewhere, a few years back.”

She nodded, and carried on quietly for a stretch before picking up again. “Boss never asked what you were doing. Would’ve asked you that right off, but I guess they figured you agreeing meant it wasn’t anything we interrupted.”

A branch drenched in moss and rot - no, not a branch - shifted in a distant patch of bog water. I watched the rising form in the corner of my eye, and the smaller form that darted back to the trees from its shadow.

_Those don’t come this close to the outside on their own._

_They’ve been sniffing you out a while, haven’t they? Has to look like shit on their resumes._

“Dunno. Nothing important. Just like to get out of the city, clears the head up.”

She scoffed, scratching the back of one of her hands. “Not exactly a vacation spot, here.”

I rattled the bottle of ethanol. Her lips pursed.

“Fine. Fair. But if you want my advice, you tone that down. Not everyone you run into here will be so forgiving of strangeness, and I imagine peering at your Shadow would-”

“Blighted elk coming up.”

“What?”

A rumbling, grating shriek echoed across the clearing.

A furious elk on its own is already terrifying. They’re larger than most give them credit for. Which isn’t helped when the forest takes them into itself as a way to feed, their joints shredding away under fungal growths and long, coarse hair, becoming host to maggots and rot and insects that strip away the skin under the hair until the exposed bone is left to leer out with thrumming, bloody intent.

The group shouted alarm to each other, and drew their weapons as the pounding hooves cut through the soft earth.

I tucked the empty bottle into my coat pocket and lit up another cigarette as they charged each other.

* * *

I watched ‘Boss’ and their remaining companion drudge the bodies from the muck, torn and shredded by hooves and antlers and the cut of blunt teeth, then align the two along the dryer beast-trail.

‘Boss’ left the other to say rites - _“Prios, Illuminance Above, hear as I cry your name,”_ \- and approached where I stood, next to where the elk had collapsed hard into the blood and bog mud.

“You.”

I nudged the carcass with my boot, watching the still-twitching nerves and pulsing roots that intertwined with molding muscles. “What?”

“You knew it was there even before it charged, didn’t you?”

“Figured your clique was doing their job.”

They jerked their sword out of where it had been embedded into the beast’s neck, voice dripping. “You slowed down even before it charged. You could’ve stopped us entirely, and give us advanced warning.”

 _Because if so, those two might have made it, and so on._ “I’m not a fighter. You wanted me to bring you further in, and that’s all I’m going to stick my neck out for. But I will tell you that this bitch -” I scuffed the elk a second time. “- is going to get back up. So you’re either going to have to carry those dead dipshits with us, or leave them for it to eat.”

They bowed up, shoulders tensing. “We are going to _bury them.”_

“You can’t kill shit like this. By the time you’re done covering the holes, it’ll be stitched back together and prepared to hunt again. Then you’ll be too dead to follow the fucker that set it off in the first place.”

A sharp breath cut through under the helmet, like they were preparing to shout, but they tapered off. “... _What_ set it off?”

I used the smouldering end of my cigarette to point to the beast’s flank. They stepped around the mud, wary of a twitch in the creature’s hind legs, and took the weapon out with a deft yank.

The bone that made up most of the dagger was mottled with age, wrapped at the handle with strips of sticky wool felt. It looked more like it was for skinning than killing, flat and wide and curved back. Their gloved thumb swiped down its length, mixing pus and a snagged grub or two.

“So, if you get who it’s from, this was under what your side was supposed to look out for.”

They muttered a low _“Shit,”_ tossed the weapon to the muck, and started back to their remaining companion.

“Leave them. We don’t have time.”

“But-”

“It was a trap. We’ve already lost too much time.”

“I’m not leaving them here to _rot!”_

“We can give them a memorial in town, with the pay. It’ll have to be enough. You’ve already spoken over their souls, and Prios will find them, even without bodies.”

I looked across the clearing, letting them go at it. Eyes I couldn’t see bored into my skin, worsening the feeling that I knew exactly where all of my veins were.

Two eyes I that _could_ see at the treeline slowly, deliberately slipped away.

* * *

“It must have gotten something on us,” I heard the one mutter to ‘Boss’. “Its blood, or bile. Something infectious.”

They stuck closer to me now than they had before, which unfortunately put me more in hearing range.

Talk about the things I’ve always experienced, from people who weren’t used to them, always felt more unsettling than the episodes themselves did.

You learn to check yourself as you go along, testing and finding where to throw your weight on things. The fact that everything’s a sliding scale of bullshit grows on you, and it gets less important to always pick out what’s not there for everyone else; it’s not a difference that really matters.

But when you don’t experience that on your own, and the Davokar introduces it to you as something new, you only have shit horror novella to base your response off of.

And by the hells they were milking it.

“It’s an evil taint. I’ve heard about people going too far into the forest. I know you have too. Running into too many things like that. Their brains get twisted. Seeing things that aren’t there, hearing things.”

_Go on._

“Madmen. They’re the only ones that get by here.”

_There you go._

I spoke up, thumbing where I kept my wand holstered through the inside lining of my coat pocket. “So you were running your mouth about having slaughtered elves, but you’re upset by a few hallucinations.”

“It’s far worse to be used to madness than bloodshed,” ‘Boss’ answered. “I can’t imagine a life like that - if you can even say they’re living. I lost a cousin to it once. They came back from the woods, changed. They wouldn’t speak to me any more.”

_What a mystery._

“It’s why I got into the treasure hunting business. A way to hit back at the abominations while paying the dues, y’know? But we stuck to the picked-through ruins, the darker Davokar was always too dangerous. Money’s not worth the risk of corruption, and finding out what kind of reward gutting a sleeping elf can rake in instead... It wasn’t even a question, swapping jobs.”

_That explains a lot more shit than you meant to._

“So when-”

 _“Boss,”_ the other companion hissed in a low, warning tone.

I stopped, turning to look at them. He had frozen to the spot, eyes fixed to the ground, feet in a wide stance to keep himself steady.

_“Don’t. Move.”_

“What is it?” they hissed back.

_“Snakes.”_

I pressed my mouth flat, smothering a snort.

You couldn’t get a more common visual manifestation than ‘writhing tendrils that spread to cover everywhere you look until soon nothing isn’t covered in them and even your own limbs…’

Petty cruelty could work here, but laughing would destroy the chance.

Checking to see what’s the physical, shared reality, can go two ways. The check can tip your mind off to what’s _meant_ to be seen, and it will want to try and course correct like the hallucination never happened. Or you can do the check, and the brain just incorporates it into the moment. A roulette between dismissing it, or experiencing it more.

I had half a second to weigh the ethics of tricking someone using that knowledge.

_‘It’s not even a question.’_

I had been wrung through some terrible stage courses - awful lessons, good foreplay - and I tried to summon up what scraps my uninterested-in-that head could remember between our skin-thrashing intermissions.

I screamed.

It was horrible, over-blown and what Sliske probably would’ve called “hammy.” And he would’ve been right. I stumbled back, forcing my eyes wide as I fell, batting at my legs to fend off the squirming, fanged tendrils I knew from experience he had to be seeing overtake me.

He screamed in reply, more adrenaline-fueled, more legitimate than mine, and back-pedaled with growing horror. His own legs caught his attention, and in a frenzy he fled, desperate to shake the intruders off his thick armor.

I got back to my feet as ‘Boss’ ran after him, barrelling through the woods with as much noise as if I’d fired off a flare spell.

Enough to draw the eyes off me.

I stepped down the path their boots had cut, following the sounds of snapping branches and trampled growths. Two sets, then one set, and when I caught up they had stopped. ‘Boss’ whirled to me in a rage, pressing their sword’s edge to my throat.

I could barely see the form of the other hunter behind them, sprawled to the ground, twitching and coughing as the skinning knife in their neck bled him dry.

_“What are you?”_

Automatic response kicked in, made harder to stop by the current position. “A tight slut and an alcoholic.”

“That’s not…” They pressed harder, pain causing my neck to spasm where the steel sunk too far. “You’re _working with it, aren’t you?”_

“I haven’t fucked off out of your sight since you hired me.”

“You talked to it _before_ we found you, _you had to have!”_

“Maybe I just agree with what’s happening to you.”

I gasped as they severed my jugular.

* * *

Being dead wasn’t really an unpleasant feeling. 

Not a great one, either, but there were worse. If this counted. I wasn’t sure where it fell on any thought-model.

I stood next to my body as the hunter carried on, the sound of metal plunging into its chest muted by the world layers between us. They drew back when they were sure I was dead, very thoroughly, then darted to their companion’s long-still side.

“It’d have been better to try and patch him up before going after me, jackass,” I offered, though they couldn’t hear me.

They checked his pulse in vain, ran their gloves across the wound, then moved on to his bag. I crouched down next to them, eyeing if he had anything good, and watched them draw out a flat chip with a spell engraved on the surface.

“Oh, you fucking coward,” I muttered as they crushed the chip in their fist, swept off into specks of dust by the outflux of a stored transport ritual. They’d reform somewhere, probably back in Thistle Hold, then be free to give some bastardized account of a sob story.

I moved from that corpse back to my own, and took a cross-legged seat while I waited. It would be a bit.

The process had already been struggling along before the cut, working on keeping my stomach and lungs working despite the ethanol. The muscles under my neck were writhing, grasping for the connection points they remembered as being the right ones. The mess of a torso was still trying to get the ruptured blood veins repaired and pressurized.

A shadow crept from the trees and took their own seat near my body, after collecting their knife from the soldier’s neck.

The elf was about a foot shorter than I was - four total, or so - with a sunken nose, hollow pits of eyes, nubs of horns, and long multi-braided hair like translucent tendrils. I could see hints of where Sliske’s ancestry overlapped.

Too many sharp teeth bit against the bone blade as they waited with me, or _on_ me, grinning as they enjoyed the stimming motion. Watching them ticked off my own habit, like an itch in my fingers and lips.

I tried to grab the carton from my damaged coat, even though I knew better. I clipped through it, and flinched reflexively at the disconnect. The body’s hand tried to connect with my motion, drawing the elf’s gaze, before the lack of a sustaining system made it go limp again.

_Bullshit. Fine. I’ll wait, like always._

And I did, sprawling out on my back with the illusion of ground beneath me, making awful gurgling noises and calling the circling carrion birds unpleasant names to pass the time. I’d stopped paying attention by the time the last patch of critical-flesh repatched itself, enough to force my vital signs kickstart, and the sensation of being drug back caught me in its unpleasant hooks.

It was like being pulled through the tension at the surface of water, harsh and unbreathable with a feeling of being suffocated in the bad way, forced through a film that started at your forehead and pushed you down a long drop that ends too quickly for the brain to console itself with a fresh stint of death-chemicals.

My consciousness tumbled through the conclusion, cracking in a way I don’t think I could ever really describe, and cold air shocked my lungs as I gasped for it through a raw throat.

_“Shit- fucker- ass-”_

“Welcome back!”

 _“Shh,”_ I wheezed, eyes watering, as I pushed myself up. Parts of my chest and stomach were still torn, extra skin and muscle still on the mend. But I could move, so it was fine. I hobbled to the soldier’s bag, fumbled for the canteen I’d seen inside, and hard swallowed the vodka swill.

_Stingy dipshits._

_Just give me the medical shit, sure._

It went to my stomach too fast, burning at the freshly knitted hole patches.

“You forgot some skin over here,” the elf called.

“I’m coming back over for it, calm the hell down.”

I returned to my spot and slumped down, hissing through my teeth at the crawling sensation, then eyed them. “Is there shit you need? ”

They pointed at my pocket.

I grunted, drew the carton out, and flicked it open. They plucked one out with too-thin, too-long fingers, and started to unwrap the paper. I took one for myself, satisfying the earlier tick.

“We’re not friends. This isn’t a friend offering.”

“You’re turning into one of them,” they said, starting to lick up the herbal contents between breaths. “Like Aloéna.”

“Shut the hell up.” I pushed myself back to my feet. “Don’t get all smug, like I don’t know it.”

“They’ll be going after you like they do us, before too long. Will anyone lead them in circles for you when it’s your turn?”

“I have to go find my car. Go back to school, or whatever it is you spring fucks do.”

“Watch out for the elk!”

“Kiss my ass. ”

They laughed as I limped into the trees, one pair of watching eyes fewer.

* * *

## 'Boss'

I kept myself in the board room we’d rented for the expedition. Enough beds for all of us, but now there was only me. I had to keep the lanterns blazing bright, unable to pretend I was in a room for one in favor of the need to stave off the tricks my accursed brain still played on me.

It would fade, I knew - the taint was small, and it was temporary in small doses - but it couldn’t happen soon enough.

_Prios. Lord of Light. Cleanse my mind, keep me from the Shadows that-_

“That was rather rude of them, love, but I can’t say you didn’t deserve at least a bit of it.”

“Fuck you too.”

“Here?”

I froze.

_He’s dead. That voice is dead. It’s just another one of these awful tricks. A mind-ghost of the forest, toying with me._

_Prios._

“Guy downstairs said this room, right?”

“I can’t recall, but I suspect you’ll -”

The lock crunched with the tumble of what I knew was a spell. A spell, an all-too-here spell, unless my ears worked in tandem with the betrayal of my eyes. I remembered my cousin, who I had pitied and cooed over as they jumped at things not real. Was I growing just as pathetic as I had seen them?

“- try it anyways. You could use more tact with these things, you know. Knocking.”

The door swung open, and I pushed off the bed. 

“Is this them?”

The short, foul-mouthed man from the woods stood framed in the hall, hands in the pockets of his mended coat.

“Yeah, that’s probably the bitch.”

“As you wish.”

The person with him - a changeling, large in stature, with glinting gold eyes - stepped into the room, pulling a long silk glove off one of his hands. I pushed back, palming for where on the floor I had discarded my sword. A clawed hand pulled me up by the hair before I could grab it, and the gloveless hand pinned my head to the top of the end table.

_“But you- I- What are-?”_

“I said in the woods. A tight slut, and an alcoholic.”

“He is also, really, just so deeply cursed,” the changeling added with a too-pleasant, upturned smile, as the pricks of two sharp nails gouged into the corners of my eyes.

Stands of pain twisted into my mind from where they dug in, spinning into puppet’s stings that tightened -

“You know how it is.”

\- until I knew no more.


End file.
